My story of what its like to be married to an Amway cult follower. I expose the lies that our upline told and what happens at Amway meetings and functions. I leave the explanations of why Amway is a poor business opportunity or the tool scam to other bloggers. This blog mainly exists to curse out my former upline, aka the cult leaders, and to let everyone know what kind of idiots I had to put up with. Feel free to join in or live vicariously!

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Warning Signs Of The Amway Cult

I was trying to find a web site that might help spouses, family, and friends
of Amway cult followers.

Here is their list of signs that an organization has cult characteristics:

Has
there been strong pressure for me to join or to stay?

Am
I being pressured to recruit others?

Are
my doubts and questions discouraged, avoided, or even forbidden?

If
I’m critical of the group, am I told there’s something wrong with me?

Do
I not have an opportunity to verify information provided by the group?

Am
I expected to reveal fears and secrets?

Does
the group’s leadership dictate how I should act, think, or feel?

Do
I not get enough sleep now or have enough time to devote to outside
pursuits and responsibilities?

Am
I made to feel fear or guilt when I don’t do exactly as my leader or
elders in the group told me?

Have
I lost my old friends?

Have
I missed important family occasions because I was encouraged to be with
fellow group members instead or given an urgent task to complete?

Is
there a belief that the leader has special powers?

Have
I been promised things by the group that have yet to materialize?

Was
I told that joining this group was my only path to happiness, peace, God,
or even prosperity?

Wow! Talk about summarizing our Amway experience!

Here’s my answers:

The
pressure was on to join. “Now is the time to sign up with Amway. Its about
to explode on the Internet. You want to get in now.” Seeing as how we’d
already tried Amway once before and I wasn’t interested in losing money
again I suggested to Ambot that we wait and see how his friend Captain
Fuck Up made out. If that fuck up was doing good after a few months then
that might be proof to me that things are different in Amway. Ambot was
mad. He’d already been sneaking around meeting the cult leaders and had
all the canned responses. We were going to miss out BIG if we didn’t sign
up now and get in while the getting in was good. After a few months the
pressure was on to stay. “You can’t quit now. Not when success is right
around the corner and you’re about to go really BIG!”

Ha
ha! That goes without saying. That’s what Amway is about. Recruiting other
IBO’s and tricking suckers into going to Amway meetings.

Absolutely!
“Never question upline!”

That’s
another big yes. “Don’t speak negative!” unless of course you're an
unchristian, negative dream stealer who is a loser with a J.O.B. and worse
than that a broke loser!

“Don’t
search on the Internet. Its full of lies and you can’t believe anything
you read there.”

Yes.
Your upline wants to know EVERYTHING so they can use it against you later
on.

Another
big yes! You’re told to dress in business attire, drive high end vehicles,
carry cell phones, do whatever it takes to project a successful image.
Fake it till you make it!

Sleep!
Ha! “You’ll have time to sleep when you’re dead!” Amway meetings start at
8pm. Then there are meetings after the meeting. You’ll be lucky to get to
bed by 1am but usually later than that. Forget about anything else in your
life that doesn’t have anything to do with Amway.

Oh
yes! You must ask upline’s permission before doing anything! If you don’t
you will be the subject of ranting and raging at the next Amway meeting.
Plus you’ll be harassed with phone calls, text messages, and emails
criticizing you for doing your own thing. The Amway cult leader is a
person to be worshipped and feared.

Yes,
your old friends don’t want nothing to do with you anymore because you’re
prospecting them to come to Amway meetings, sign up as an IBO, or buy
overpriced Amway shit. They’ll avoid you like the plague!

Family
occasions? Forget about them if there’s an Amway meeting scheduled or
someone upline wants you to drop everything and kiss their ass.

Yes.
Upline were displayed as having these magical powers to be successful in
Amway and if you spent time with them and learned from them and duplicated
them you would have these secret magic powers too.

6 comments:

Amway is what many astute commentators are starting to call "a business cult." In fact, the Chinese government is having a very big problem right now with a proliferation of these "business cults."

These cults disguise themselves as "business opportunities," but are in fact nothing but get-rich-quick pyramid schemes that target young and vulnerable persons just out of college, or who are at loose ends.

Business cults operate as mind-and-behavior-control systems. Once you are signed up and brainwashed, the entire focus of the cult is to keep you in, and keep you contributing funds.

Amway is merely the grandfather of all these business cults. Everything in Amway can be reduced to three words: CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL.

Absolute cult through and through. I can attest to it as I wasted not only 3 years of my life with them, but wasted so much money. I'm so glad we left right before our first child was born because I am sickened to think we would have stayed and had to leave my baby several nights for those stupid board plans, second looks, and those boring dragging functions with "concerts" that I couldn't stand year after year. It makes me mad now thinking how brain washed we were and how upline kept twisting the truth about what we were really doing, putting the blame on us about not moving pin levels and so we stayed because we were made to believe that we just needed to work harder. The more that time goes on, the more I realize just how ridiculous the whole thing is because the brainwashing and conditioning has finally worn off. I visit this site every once in a while because I want to vent or be able to nod and agree with others who have left. My husband doesn't even like to talk about it and just wants to forget it and move on. He resents that our upline advised us to lease a car which in the end ends up costing us more because of the insurance premiums and limit on mileage which we went over for driving to functions and events. Yeah, they didn't tell us about the insurance premiums or the fact that it ended up being more expensive for us to lease than buy a car. They were just regurgitating what their upline said without actually doing it themselves. I can't believe how we were taught to just accept everything they told us and to "not question upline." It's a disservice to the uniqueness, independence, and free choice of humanity.

Hi Ex Amway WWDB - thanks for sharing your story. I'm glad you got out of Scamway before having kids so you didn't destroy their lives too. Yup as soon as you get away from Amway assholes you can deprogram yourself and realize what you went through was not normal. Amway is a cult.

I hate now that whenever we are out in public and someone or a couple is friendly to us and is trying to start a conversation, I'm wary that they are trying to "drop the message" or trying to recruit us into Amway. Can't even feel like people truly just want to talk anymore.

I hear what you're saying. Ambots are fakey nice and fake pretending to be interested in others. Just to make a buck. And it makes you suspicious whether new people you meet are really nice people or if they're Amway Ambots.

Comments are moderated but we publish just about everything. Even brainwashed ambots who show up here to accuse us of not trying hard enough and that we are lazy, quitters, negative, unchristian dreamstealers. Like we haven’t heard that Amspeak abuse from the assholes in our upline!

If your comment didn’t get published it could be one of these reasons:1. Is it the weekend? We don’t moderate comments on weekends. Maybe not every day during the week either. Patience.2. Racist/bigoted comments? Take that shit somewhere else.3. Naming names? Public figures like politicians and actors and people known in Amway are probably OK – the owners, Diamonds with CDs or who speak at functions, people in Amway’s publicity department who write press releases and blogs. Its humiliating for people to admit their association with Amway so respect their privacy if they’re not out there telling everyone about the love of their life.4. Gossip that serves no purpose. There are other places to dish about what Diamonds are having affairs or guessing why they’re getting divorced. If you absolutely must share that here – don’t name names. I get too many nosy ambots searching for this. Lets not help them find this shit.5. Posting something creepy anonymously and we can’t track your location because you’re on a mobile device or using hide my ass or some other proxy. I attracted an obsessed fan and one of my blog administrators attracted a cyberstalker. Lets keep it safe for everyone. Anonymous is OK. Creepy anonymous and hiding – go fuck yourselves!6. Posting something that serves no purpose other than to cause fighting.7. Posting bullshit Amway propaganda. We might publish that comment to make fun of you. Otherwise take your agenda somewhere else. Not interested.8. Notice how this blog is written in English? That's our language so keep your comments in English too. If you leave a comment written in another language then we either have to use Google translate to put it into English so everyone can understand what you wrote or we can hit the Delete button. Guess which one is easier for us to do?9. We suspect you're a troublemaking Amway asshole.10. Your comment got caught in the spam filter. Gets checked occasionally. We’ll get to you eventually and approve it as long as it really isn’t spam.

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About Me

I'm married to a former Ambot - one of those annoying commissioned Amway salespeople. Fortunately he saw the light of the horrible cult he was part of and ended his association. I'm here to report on the crap he took and I had to put up with. Hoping I might be able to help some poor souls who find themselves in the same situation I was - married to an ambot.